Police seize $60,000 in bogus note haul
JAKARTA (JP): Police announced on Wednesday the seizure last week of counterfeit American dollars totaling $60,000, in $100 denominations, from a 61-year-old resident of Bekasi.
Chief of Jakarta Police detectives Col. Alex Bambang Riatmodjo told reporters that the arrest of Imansyah on April 18 at his home on Jl. Bandeng II in Malaka Jaya subdistrict, Bekasi, was made based on a tip-off from two other men who were arrested earlier in the day.
The men were detained for red-handedly attempting to illegally sell a Smith & Wesson gun along with eight .38 caliber bullets to undercover police personnel.
Alex, however, failed to explain why he released details of the arrests to the media a week later.
He identified the first two suspects as Teguh, 32, a resident of Jl. Bukit Duri in Tebet, South Jakarta, and Supaji, alias Burik, 30, of Jl. Tebet Timur, also in South Jakarta.
"The two were arrested by officers from the crime and violence unit at 11 a.m. on the same day," Alex said.
According to the unit chief, Maj. Dharma Pongrekun, the story began last month when the police received reliable information about a firearms syndicate in South Jakarta.
Dharma then assigned some of his men to go undercover. The officers met and persuaded Teguh and Burik to sell them a firearm, he said.
"We nabbed the two when they were conducting the transaction with us near the Bekasi Barat football field," Dharma told reporters.
During police questioning, Teguh and Bukri named Imansyah as the head of their illegal business. Police then rushed to Imansyah's house in Bekasi, he said.
Besides apprehending the prime suspect, the police also found the fake U.S. banknotes and several pieces of equipment, such as printing machinery, printing paper, liquids and photocopied serial numbers, allegedly used to produce the counterfeited greenback notes.
Police, Dharma said, were still probing the case to find the possible roles of more of Imansyah's syndicate members in the counterfeit money business.
So far, he said, Imansyah had been giving false information to the police.
Police, for example, checked an address on Jl. Pramuka, East Jakarta, following Imansyah's testimony that he got the equipment and the printing paper from a man at the address named Piping Saragih, whom he met some "four to five years ago at Piping's restaurant."
The police, however, were later informed that Piping died two months ago, reportedly of a drug overdose.
Imansyah told reporters on Thursday that he bought the gun in late 1994 from a man called Keling in Klender, East Jakarta, and since then had been waiting for a buyer. But Dharma said that his officers were fed up with Imansyah's lies.
"He, for instance, told us that Teguh and Bukri were his middlemen ... whom he employed. Why then was he unable to sell one gun in six years via these men?"
"We believe that this whole 'Piping' story is just nonsense, and is a cover-up," Dharma said.
In an unrelated development, city police arrested one man on Wednesday for possession of a .9 caliber FN gun and 20 bullets. The man did not have a legal permit for the weapon and was apprehended at his residence in Tanjung Priok, North Jakarta.
Alex identified the suspect as Bagio Susanto, 24.
The suspect is thought to have bought the gun for Rp 2.5 million ($300) from a noncommissioned officer, Nanang Abdorrochman of the Indonesian Navy West Fleet, in Bandung, West Java.
Nanang, who was arrested by Bandung Police earlier in April, said he purchased the gun for Rp 1.5 million from a man identified as Harlan bin Omar. Harlan was arrested by Bandung Police in late March. (ylt)